Merry Christmas - Part 1

I love the tradition of our Christmas mornings. For the past 5 years, we've been able to host a breakfast with some friends from our ward who don't have family in the area. It might drive Stella a little crazy to have to wait to open her presents until after NOON, but she bears it tolerably well.

This year was a little nuts though. There was a family that moved into our ward on Christmas morning and had to be picked up at the bus station just 15 minutes before our breakfast started.

This would have been a little bit of a time conflict if Grandpa Dibble and a co-worker of Elliot's (Curtis) wouldn't have been at our house to help cook the pancakes. They were such big helpers so that Elliot could go pick up the family!

Also, Curtis was the photographer, so he's not in any pictures. And he did dishes. And entertained the guests with Stella. One is left to wonder what I did. I made the table cloths and eggs and lukewarm water for hot cocoa.

Stella adopted a crusty-eyed little kitten a few days before Christmas (she named her Sarah). It was meowing so pitifully outside our door and Stella was so broken-hearted that I let her feed it some tuna and milk . . . far away from the house so that she wouldn't get used to us. I also instructed Stella NOT TO TOUCH THE KITTY! She's such a great listener.

This is Curtis's jeep. He collects stuff and glues it to his jeep. He's got a bunch of crap on there. It was quite the spectacle.

We are so grateful that our friends like to come over to share our Christmas with us and I'm glad they weren't too offended when Stella told them all to pipe down so they could listen to her play her new guitar.